Questions tagged [computer-science]
On standards or conventions specific to computer science as an academic discipline, and programs that lead to a degree in this field. For regular computer science questions, visit our sister site Computer Science Stack Exchange.
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Why don't researchers publish failed experiments?
The following might be a slight generalization for all fields but something I've noticed especially in the field of Scientific Computing:
Why don't people publish failures? I mean, if they tried some ...
user107
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In a formal paper, should I censor "brainf**k", the name of a programming language?
I'm working on a formal paper about programming languages. I am going to talk about two intentionally difficult languages, brainfuck and JSFuck. Should I leave the names as they are, or censor the ...
max
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Best-practice models for "research" code?
I have been a professional software developer for a number of years, I'm also an academic researcher - and my research has involved lots of software development.
I sometimes feel as though my ...
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Is publishing runnable code instead of pseudo code shunned?
In Computer Science is it preferable to describe algorithms using pseudo code rather than real code? If so, why?
I've talked to a few academics who think so but I can't understand why. Some of the ...
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"Dressing down" to impress in academic settings
I came across this highly-upvoted comment on reddit (15,300 karma) by /u/Semi-Hemi-Demigod
The CEO of the company I work for said that it's not uncommon for
programmers to be asked to dress down ...
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How should I proceed when a (famous) professor says I'm not good enough for research?
I am a PhD student in a Computer Science department, doing research of a mathematical nature. Some of my research problems drifted from my advisor's area of expertise, so I reached out to a researcher ...
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How to react to a student proselytising during office hours?
A few weeks ago, a student asked me during my office hours whether I was religious or not. More specifically, he asked whether I believed in his religion, and was visibly disappointed when I replied ...
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Someone plagiarised my entire paper. What should I do now?
I am a high school student who published some academic. Today, I saw a paper which looked quite similar to a paper that I published back in May. I was shocked to notice that the author of that paper ...
user44217
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How do some institutions attract so many female computer scientists?
It's no secret that computer science is a heavily male-dominated discipline. It's so male-dominated that some people have given up trying to attract more women. Yet Carnegie Mellon not only has close ...
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Why are academics not paid royalties on published research papers in IEEE, ACM etc.? [closed]
I understand that academics are not paid a single dime on their publications. In my field (computer science), IEEE, ACM, Springer, Elsevier are some known journals/publications and none of them pay ...
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I recently started my machine learning PhD and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing
I started my PhD a few months ago.
Seriously, I don't know how I got accepted, but here I am. I am not a computer scientist, but come from a different STEM background. My knowledge in machine ...
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Reject a paper based on relevant but pointless research direction
Disclaimer: this is a hypothetical question, not (immediately) related to any concrete past, present or future reviewed paper.
My context is the no-fly zone between Computer Science and Applied ...
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What good is my paper if the code is not open source?
I have been working with my research group on a number of papers in a certain area of Computer Science. These papers have a certain portion which is theoretical (i.e. contains theorems, formalisms, ...
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3 3-hour exams in a row with no time in between. What can I do?
I am currently studying computer science in a University in Canada.
I have just received my Schedule for the semester, and I have noticed that, during the finals week, 3 of my 6 courses put their ...
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Inadmissible theorems in research
One of my engineering friends told me how e once had to take a make-up calculus I exam due to being hospitalised and so self-studied a lot of the missed topics. For the make-up exam, e used L'Hôpital'...
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Is it okay to refuse a laptop from a new university if you already have your own personal laptop?
I got a postdoc position and I am moving to a new university. I was contacted by my new professor about choosing a laptop that the department would buy for me.
The option they have is roughly the ...
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Why do Computer Science degrees contain a high proportion of mathematics?
About 17 years ago I attended a top 10 UK university to study for a degree in Computer Science.
Mathematics had never been a particularly strong point for me. However I (just) had the required A-...
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How can I avoid overuse of words like "however" and "therefore" in academic writing?
I am in the field of computer science (more specifically robotics), and as I am writing, I must actively avoid using the words "however", "therefore", etc... every few sentences. ...
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Academic code copied by library author
The papers I write contain all the source code required to reproduce results. I have written a series of papers that build on each other over the years. My intention has been to release an open-source ...
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Is improving a simple algorithm without beating the state of the art still publishable?
In a particular field there are two algorithms being used:
Algorithm Simple: you understand it in five minutes, you can implement it in fifteen.
Algorithm State of the Art (SOA): requires very ...
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Is it normal that a peer reviewer would ask for an executable file in order to check my results?
I have just received a decision letter for my submitted manuscript to an Elsevier journal. It was a revise and resubmit. However one of the reviewer asked for an executable file in order to check my ...
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Will I destroy my career if I published a paper with a serious mistake?
I'm an undergrad and kind of new to this whole research thing. I've been doing research for the past ~9 months as a requirement to graduate with my bachelor's (there's the research track and software ...
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After my PhD how much salary should I expect as a professor of computer science?
It's easy for me to find out salaries for tech-jobs but it seems Professor salaries are quite hush-hush. I really love to teach and would be more than willing to join academia. However, I may choose ...
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Is paying someone to fix LaTeX issues in one's thesis ethical?
For my bachelor thesis in theoretical CS I paid someone to
fix some weird LaTeX issues I had
make some figures in LaTeX for which I provided exact (!) hand-drawn pictures
adjust the document class/...
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What is the point of a PhD thesis whose content already exists in published papers?
In my area (computer science) it is standard to publish several papers during the course of your PhD and then only "write" your thesis in the last few months of graduate school --- often you only ...
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How to handle a colleague who hasn't pulled their weight
I'm working on a project with a partner that involves developing a mobile app and corresponding server. I won't bother with the specifics, but both involve a fair amount of work (both require some ...
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I have a strong suspicion and weak proof that the data in the paper are fake. What to do?
I reviewed a paper submitted for a smallish magazine. It presented an algorithm to perform some allocation task and compared its performance to that of several other algorithms from the literature ...
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Do you keep your study notes publicly available?
I am considering to create a wiki/blog for most of my study notes that I have made or taken digitally.
Also, for the handwritten and rough ones I am thinking about storing them in my GitHub ...
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I wrote the code based on a paper's methodology; are there any legal problems with making it open source?
I coded the methodology based on the paper "Free Water Elimination and Mapping from Diffusion MRI" and I am curious if I am legally bound to take permission from the authors or the journal in making ...
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Why are conference papers so important in computer science (CS)?
From my understanding many CS conferences are highly selective and the papers are peer-reviewed. The CS field also seems to publish traditional journal articles. I do not understand the difference ...
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My advisor asked me to co-author a paper, but I have no interest in an academic career
I recently finished an undergraduate program and obtained an engineer’s degree. I am working as a software engineer at an automotive company and I can only imagine myself having a career in “...
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Not getting the prestigious papers
I work in a quite competitive sub-field of computer science. In computer science, we have the publication culture where people publish mostly in the proceedings of different conferences. As in other ...
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What can I do to get academic credit/recognition from my hobby project?
I've created an improved textual parsing algorithm, as a part of my hobby project. In comparison to existing ones, it provides better performance and memory efficiency. I haven't published my project ...
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What is a computer science conference, really?
I understand that in the field of computer science, publishing in a conference is the default, as opposed to other fields where it's normal to publish your research in a journal. But does the word ...
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As a PhD student, how do I benefit from reviewing a book my adviser is writing?
My adviser is writing a book for a course in computer science he will be teaching next fall and I will be the teaching assistant for that course. He wants me to review the book and go through the ...
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How do I use lemmas that are probably already proven, but including the proof myself is quicker than looking up a source?
Suppose I have proven several lemmas during my work that are neither original nor significant (these results were needed for applied engineering/CS research, not mathematics). I believe that if I ...
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Who cares about your PhD thesis?
I'm pursuing a Ph.D. in a computer science-related field (more particularly, in Artificial Intelligence). During my studies, I was involved in several projects, some of them got published in top-tier ...
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Is it ok to show up to a conference without registering if I don't eat any meals?
I'm planning to attend a prestigious conference in computer science. The registration fees are very high (~150$ per day). I'm presenting as well, but on a co-located event directly after the main ...
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Is there a convention on how to write pseudocode in scientific papers?
I've found questions answering where or when to write pseudocode in scientific papers, but I haven't found any addressing any sort of convention for pseudocode, such as syntax, what type of symbols or ...
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Is a faster implementation of an existing algorithm publishable?
So a paper exists, it was published 3 years ago and had a novel algorithm (more or less, it's in the area of finite-difference time-domain simulations).
I've taken the algorithm and accelerated it ...
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In peer-review, is it common for a reviewer to be shown and asked to comment on other reviewers' reports?
Some months ago, I was asked to review a paper for a computer science conference. I submitted my report about a week before the deadline, and I strongly recommended acceptance subject to a few minor ...
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Is it acceptable to ask for course notes ahead of time?
I am taking a course in Computer Science next semester (it is currently a vacation period for my university) and I would like to email my future lecturer and ask them for the set of course notes for ...
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I made a major (criminal) mistake in college and the whole faculty knows about it, but I graduated. Might they admit me for grad school?
I’m looking to apply for my MCS at a well-known North-American university – the same university where I completed my BCS with honors. My grades are good, more than sufficient to get into an MCS ...
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Do I have to cite common CS algorithms?
I'm working on my final thesis for a CS grade course and I want to use a common sorting algorithm (quicksort for the curious ones). Do I need to include a reference to this algorithm (cite or quote)? ...
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Is the new ACM 2012 taxonomy usable/in use?
I've wasted about an hour trying to figure out how I'm supposed to categorise an ACM article using the new 2012 taxonomy here, and how I'm supposed to represent those categories in my article.
On the ...
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How to deal with my own sloppy research published when I was an undergrad?
I am a grad student in computer science. Having read many research papers and having worked with an adviser has made me much more aware about best practices concerning presentation and reporting of ...
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How does one teach problem solving?
In teaching university level Computer Science, I find many students struggling because they lack basic problem solving skills. Having them do more practice problems does not help as they get stuck at ...
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What would an inclusive curriculum look like in a computer science course?
There exists plenty of literature about how to be inclusive, both in the workplace and in the classroom.
I'm wondering how this might be done intentionally — specifically in the context of a computer ...
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Is the status of conference publications in Computer Science really absolutely unique?
It has been discussed and explained many times that in (at least some subdisciplines of) Computer Science, conference publications have a special status compared to many other fields - where in other ...
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How to write a "Related Work" section in Computer Science?
I'm a new PhD student, wrapping up my first year of coursework. To date, I haven't published any papers, and my body of work is essentially null. For this semester's class project in one of my courses,...
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